I was dazed. Why would Krisan follow me here? I shook my head as I turned down the secondary road that led to where I wanted to go. The reception became a little spotty and I missed some of what she said.
“Well, to be honest,” I heard her soprano and I still couldn’t believe it was her. “I wasn’t making the kind of impact in Detroit I wanted to make. I looked around at the US and decided New Orleans had much more to offer,” she said in response to a question I hadn’t heard.
“Is that because of the rampant corruption and crime here in the city?” Carter Paul asked.
“Partially, though from what I can tell. Nawlins seems like a nice city.” I groan as she made the touristy mistake of using the fake nickname the city has. No one in New Orleans called it ‘Nawlins.’
“Then why are you here?”
“I’m investigating a nationwide crime syndicate—”
I slammed on the breaks, skidding in the dirt before turning up the volume. Don’t say it, don’t say it, please don’t say it!
“Wow, nationwide? Have I heard of them?”
Don’t say it. I screamed in my head.
“They’re called ISO-1. I followed them here from Detroit but I have accounts of their operations in New York, Arizona, Texas, California—pretty much any place with a port of entry. They tried to set up shop in Detroit but a mysterious vigilante known as the Wraith shut them down.”
I slammed my hand into the horn, letting it honk for a good long twenty seconds as I seethed in frustration and, yeah, a little anger. “Krisan, how could you?”
I pulled out my phone and looked up the number of the station, dialing it immediately. As soon as the operator picked up, I spoke. “I need to speak to Krisan Swahili, on air, immediately. It’s an emergency.” I needed to get her to shut up before she painted an even bigger target on her back.
“I’m sorry, you can’t just call in and…”
I switched to my Wraith voice, letting the reverberation really echo. “Tell her, it’s the Wraith from Detroit.”
The operator went silent for a moment then asked me to hold. I turned down my radio to keep the feedback to a minimum.
“You’re on the air with—”
“Tell me, Ms. Swahili, aren’t you worried that your blabbing the news of your investigation on the frigging radio might, MIGHT, jeopardize your life and the lives of other people who maybe don’t want your supposed criminal organization knowing about their existence?”
She was silent for a moment and I hoped to God she got the message. Maybe if I got her off the air fast enough, they would miss it.
“Well, I hadn’t, but I felt the need to get the story out there about this evil organization was important. Blow the lid on everything they’ve done, all the people they’ve killed… The people fought back in Detroit and look at it, we’re better off after they left.”
I had checked; crime was way down but that wouldn’t last. Without repeated applications of killing the bad people, more would move in. This, though. It’s just like her. She doesn’t think about anyone else, just her own ideals… not that I was much different, but I tried really hard not to put anyone else in danger through my actions.
“That’s very noble of you. I hope it doesn’t get you killed. You can’t always have a guardian angel.” I pressed the end button hard, wishing I could slam the phone down on the dash or something.
I sat there for ten minutes calming down. I was so mad at her I wanted to scream, and did, twice. After that passed, I did some deep breathing exercises and refocused my mind. What’s done is done. She can’t undo it, and neither can I. But I was still going to have to find her and put a talking to her.
After a few more minutes I started the car and moved out, resisting the urge to gun the engine. These big cars were great in a straight line, but if I lost control there wouldn’t be any saving it. I’d watched enough fail videos of people losing traction and driving their car right into to a wall; I knew better.
The only hills in the area were artificial, made by Baptist when he bought the land. I supposed it was a way of keeping his activities private. Backroads went by his land at several places but all of those had heavier security: cameras, guards, dogs. No. I was going to have to park far away and hoof it in if I wanted to infiltrate unnoticed.
I drove for another half hour, keeping track of the time. I had three more until the plane was scheduled to arrive, putting it at late afternoon. Two miles away I found the perfect place to hide the car—a small copse of trees next to a little spring with a few picnic tables and a once green, run down gazebo. Perfect.
I parked, popped the trunk and loaded out. There was enough open land here that I could pass unnoticed if I needed to. I pulled off my leather jacket and strapped on a new bulletproof vest then a tactical vest over that. In each of the pouches I loaded four magazines for the MOLOT Vepr 12 tactical, magazine fed, semi-automatic shotgun I had secured. Over the vest I shrugged on an olive drab Army surplus jacket. With the shotgun slung on my back and the generic black baseball cap on my head I would look like a hunter… from a distance. On my thighs I strapped on an HK P30L with a weight compensator instead of a silencer (I didn’t think there was any going quiet about this one). Four extra 15-round mags for that as well. I stuffed two frag grenades in my side pockets and a the oh-so-handy thermite grenade on the inside pocket. Two ka-bar tactical knives and my sword and I was set.
I closed the trunk, beeped the car shut and stashed the keys under a rock twenty feet away then jogged off. Flat out I could almost do a four-minute mile; loaded down with gear and running cautiously I covered the whole distance in twenty minutes. By the time I arrived at a point more than three miles from the road I was sweaty and breathing hard in the afternoon heat, but that was okay. Soon I wouldn’t feel any of it.
I used a tree to climb up and over the fence, careful not to touch any of the metal; there were several kinds of security wire that could detect a person’s touch. The fence stretched up almost fifteen feet. They’d trimmed the limbs on the tree so that none of them reached over the fence. I just had to go higher than I normally would have to clear it. I leaped, arcing over the fence and letting my shotgun fall one way as I hit the ground with a grunt, rolled, and came up to a knee, pistol out and clearing the area.
Nothing.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Sometimes my paranoia got the better of me. I slid the pistol home, retrieved the shotgun and took off. As I ran, I unfolded the scarf and wrapped it around my neck so I could easily pull it up if engaged. I really don’t want them putting a name to my face; I’d be a whole lot less scary if they knew who I was.
The trip from the fence to the landing area, aka the lake, wasn’t as fast. While I was pretty sure they didn’t have a lot of cameras on this part of the property, I wasn’t positive. I moved carefully, avoiding obvious sight lines and problematic areas where I couldn’t tell if there were cameras or not.
When I reached the edge of the lake I hunkered down behind a fallen log, scanning the far side for movement. The house in the distance was huge: seven stories, parapets, towers, it looked like something out of Downton Abbey—minus the armed security patrolling the balconies. Where do they find all these people, Bad-Guys-R-Us?
I kicked in my enhanced vision, bringing the far side into crystal clarity. It was almost as if I was there. I had to move my head slowly as even a small movement would blur my vision, like looking through a telescope. An aluminum dock stretched thirty feet into the water; two armed men were standing on it. One had a pair of binoculars and looked like he was searching the far side of the lake. He wasn’t looking at me, but he would soon. Which was unfortunate considering the complete lack of concealment along the lake. Besides the debris washed up on the shore that I hid behind, there wasn’t a whole lot. Some tall grass fifteen feet back, and a few scattered trees. The only thing that hid my approach was the built-up bank of the lake.
If I tried to circle the lake on the shore I’d be spotted in seconds
. Same for swimming it; the water was calm enough that a fish splashing caused a noticeable ripple.
A loud rumbling reached my ears. I snapped out of my vision enhancement and waited, listening for a second… yeah, that was the seaplane. Flying a few hundred feet off the deck it cruised by right overhead. The main body looked like a boat, two wings protruded out with pontoons coming down. Each wing had a prop engine that roared in the air.
Well, whatever I was going to do, I needed to do it now.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I couldn’t run or swim, and without a dark shadow teleporting was out. That left me with falling back and waiting.
No. Not going to do that. However…
I watched as the plane circled again, probably making sure the water was safe. I imagined that hitting debris while landing could be devastating. Perhaps enough to delay their departure and focus everyone’s attention elsewhere while a certain Wraith made her way to the dock, using the seaplane as cover while she moved through the water.
I liked that plan. It was just hot enough that a little dip in the water was called for.
I had two different rounds for my semi-auto shotgun: traditional buckshot and jacketed hyper velocity sabot rounds. I only had the one mag of the sabot because it wasn’t as useful; great for taking out the guy behind the guy, but not as effective a man-stopper as the buckshot. Even if they were wearing a vest it would still knock them down long enough for me to finish them off.
The plane circled one more time before coming down to land. In my experience, planes were loudest when they took off and when they landed; I just had to wait. I loaded in the sabot rounds, racked one in, and rested the barrel against the side of the log to minimize visibility.
The plane turned, heading for the water coming in from the right and passing perpendicular to my location. It wasn’t the best angle, but I could make it work. The plane was going maybe a hundred miles an hour as it came in. Regardless of the target’s speed, it didn’t really change how far I needed to lead it. I was only going to have one shot at this… literally and figuratively.
I looked down the sights, controlling my breathing to a nice steady, predictable rhythm. The engines roared as the plane goosed the power and I held my breath at the same instant. When the target passed in front of my sights I adjusted and squeezed the trigger, letting my breath out in a silent count of five. On three the shotgun banged.
The plane bucked and the engine spewed fire and oil as it hit the water in the same instant. The pilot did a fantastic job of keeping control and brought it to a slow crawl toward the docks. The left side engine shuddered to a stop and the other one took over, limping the plane to a halt.
I crouched low as I moved down the bank into the water, slow enough that I didn’t draw anyone’s eye, but fast enough that they would have to be extremely lucky to see me.
Swimming slowly over long distances can be tricky, but I trained for this. Rolling on to my back I let my natural buoyancy carry me while I fluttered my arms under the water to keep me moving in the right direction. The danger zone was the first few minutes it took for me to angle the seaplane between me and the mass of armed guards. After that, it was worrying about the noise. Lucky for me, I’m pretty quiet.
As I approached, I could hear a mass of voices all talking at once. From what I could make out, the pilots spoke only Spanish. The two others—a man with a creepy voice and one with a accent that sounded German, but wasn’t—argued with the pilots.
“Listen, I’m telling you that is a gunshot hole, comprendo?” the not-quite German fellow said. I didn’t catch what the response was but it I could tell they were arguing. Good. I slipped under the water and made my way by touch underneath the plane until I was under the docks.
Unlike a wooden dock, aluminum doesn’t have random holes to look through; it is also very predictable. I noticed that with the plane tethered to it, the slats tended to pull then contract. If I was careful, I could look through and see what I was up against.
I almost wished I hadn’t.
From my reading I learned all about how so-called supervillains are rated. There is no killing potential difference between an F1, the lowest form of super, and F2. Those ratings are for people who have benign powers. See through walls, walk on water, that sort of thing. The powers themselves didn’t increase their potential for mass slaughter. Once you got into the F3 range though, there was a definite uptick of killing power. A man who could lift two thousand pounds could run through a mall punching holes in people and killing dozens before he could be stopped.
That same man with super-speed could kill hundreds. Add invulnerability and that number shoots into the thousands. One of the things that makes ISO-1 unusual is their use of super-powered enforcers. Most people who have powers and commit crimes earn themselves a ticket to the North Dakota UltraMax Prison. Anything violent and they only checked in, never out. On top of all the other criminals we have to jail, the government couldn’t afford to make minimum and maximum security prisons for individuals with powers—or at least that is what Dad always said.
It always seemed harsh to me… not anymore. Of course, the irony here was that if I were ever caught I would end up in the same place. At least I wouldn’t get bored.
I had never heard of the three people standing on the dock, but the fact that they had superpowers wasn’t in question. From what I could see, one of them had black feathery wings to go along with his obsidian black skin. He’d make an African look pale in comparison. The other man wore ripped a leather jacket and chains and hadn’t shaved in the last decade. The last was a petite girl with pale blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She wore a tasteful but skimpy outfit, almost like a Catholic School Girl’s uniform but with more knives.
Then it hit me why the accent sounded German… it was Russian. It took one of them saying do svidaniya, for me to get it. Okay, so these bad boys and girl were superpowered enforcers, probably brought in to deal with me. Damn if ISO doesn’t respond quickly. I’ve only seriously screwed up their operations in the last few days and they already brought in a response team.
I moved closer to shore, where I could put my feet on the muddy ground under the water. Once there I slipped the shotgun off my back, careful to hold the sling so it wouldn’t make any noise. I didn’t want to take a chance with these people. They looked dangerous and there was no point in risking a confrontation with unknowns.
I moved the butt up to my shoulder, brought the sights up and leveled the barrel to where I thought they were. I still had the high-velocity sabot rounds loaded, which was excellent, since I needed to take out all three at the same time.
Taking a deep breath, I slowly let it out as I squeezed the trigger—
“What was that?”
The shotgun roared in my hands, kicking me in the shoulder as it sent the twelve-gauge sabot round out the barrel with 3,800 foot-pounds of energy. The aluminum might as well not have existed for all the protection it offered. The winged man took the round in the chest, blasting through him like paper and into the girl behind him.
Evidently the dude in leather was the one who spoke, because he was already diving off the dock as I fired. Wing-man and the girl went down without a cry; they didn’t have time to feel the pain before they died.
Then it hit me. Like a tidal wave, greater than ever before. A rush like no other. My very being was alive with power. Leather and chains hit the water and came up instantly with a pair of machine pistols firing in my directions. With the sun high in the sky and no real shadows to speak of, I was stuck moving in the regular way. Several rounds impacted my back, hitting me like baseballs as they slammed into my vest. I let the force carry me forward and I used it to dive in the water and put some distance between me and him.
When I surfaced on the other side of the seaplane I headed for the beach, slogging out of the water as fast as I could, shedding weight by the second as my clothes and boots dumped water in a pool around me. I had the shotgun up to my shoulder and was
already zeroing in on a target; it wasn’t Leatherman but one of the private security forces. I pulled the trigger and he went down like a sack of potatoes underneath a splash of crimson paint.
My senses were alive with powers despite the daylight and I heard the ligament of a finger pulling on a trigger. I dove forward as a hail of bullets sprayed the air above me. Without looking, I rolled to my side and over my shoulders, spun around and fired. Somehow, don’t ask me how, Leather had acquired some kind of defensive riot shield; it was all metal with a peephole in it. The sabot round was powerful but it wasn’t armor piercing; it deflected off the shield, shedding the energy on the barrier and knocking him back a foot. I decided to play with that.
I fired again, moving steadily forward with each shot. The rounds banged against him like a hammer as he tried to return fire without falling down. He ditched the machine pistol, then another gun, a large silver revolver with only five cylinders appeared in his hand. Well, dang it all if that isn’t a useful power.
The gun bucked, sending a .500 Smith and Wesson round tearing through my vest without stopping. Normally such a wound would end it for me but I was jazzed on the power of having killed those two supers and the normal—it was like I was supercharged. I didn’t recall it happening so intensely after I killed the super-powered Russian in Detroit, but at the time I was so far in the exhaustion hole it might have just been what kept me awake for twenty-four hours while I traveled.
I spun as the round hit me, extending the shotgun out and firing it with one hand. The last round went right through his shield viewport, shattering the bullet resistant glass and punching a hole the size of my fist through his head.
The ground came up fast, despite the power flooding through me; I had taken a massive wound and I needed a second to recover.
If the rest of the thugs in the place would give it to me.
Bullets rained down around me as time caught up. I army crawled over to the shield, flipping it over and using it to stop the slugs. They were firing a variety of small arms, from 9mm to .556. If my shotgun couldn’t hole this shield, nothing they had would. But it wouldn’t take them long to flank me, so I had to move. I rolled to my feet, lifted the shield up and slammed the base into the ground, setting it solid. I spun around for a second, putting a round through the pilot who was trying to hide behind the seaplane’s door. It protected him about as much as the aluminum dock did.
The Wraith- Welcome Home Page 6
